Interwar Period Essay

The interwar period was a period of time during the First World War and the Second World War. It lasted throughout 1919 and 1939. During this period of time, many things happened that considerably changed the country’s course. This was mostly based on economic problems. Germany was specially doing badly during this period as they had lost the First World War and they had to pay for war reparations which were an incredible high number. Luckily for the Germans, there cam Hitler and made them rise from despair, but that is just after the interwar period.

During the interwar period, the Treaty of Versailles was created and Germany was the one with most bad consequences. Beside the reparations, as mentioned before, Germany had to reduce its size to less than 100,000 men and land was also taken from Germany. Soon after this, the United States became what would be called the world’s banker and helped with the economic problems there in Europe. It was all going well until the unfortunate event of 1929 which was the Great Depression. The Great Depression hit the United States and as it was the world’s banker, many countries that participated in the First World War like Germany and the United Kingdom were affected by this event.

Here is where the economic problem arose. The Great Depression took many jobs away from people and lowered the economic state of many countries. Germany, who was at the edge of falling relied on Hitler to help them break through their economic problems. For the United States, they relied on President Franklin Roosevelt to help them rise from their economic demise. Franklin Roosevelt applied the New Deal and after giving jobs to the unemployed after some time, they finally got out of the Great Depression. Following this is the preparation of Hitler’s army and invasion to France breaking the Treaty of Versailles. This action was influenced by Benito Mussolini’s actions of fascism which led Hitler to its dictatorship.

If other dictators were ruling different countries, they could have changed the course of history. This part is assuming that the dictators would do the same actions they performed at their critical situations in other countries even if those actions would not be the most convenient at the time. If Francisco Franco would have been ruling France, at the beginning of World War One, he would have been allied with Germany making their chances of winning the war together. Even though, if they were loosing the war, he would have surrendered to the Allied powers and would have given them full cooperation of their part if he knew that Germany had not chance of winning. If Francisco Franco were to be ruling Germany, he would have tried to be allied with the most countries and then would have begun invading other countries.

If the other dictators (Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin) were to be ruling different countries, the first thing they would is eliminate any other enemy force that were obstructing their path to dictatorship and then convince their whole country with propaganda. The next thing to do is grow in military size after all this done, they would have invaded any other country and would struggle for world domination. In conclusion, power corrupts everyone making them want more to a point were even their own people doubt their ways, and that is the reason why Germany fell in both World Wars.